Correspondance

I am sure I’m not the only stationery enthusiast who has a little trouble using up all the acquisitions I make. Avoiding excessive hoarding and storage overflow (and subsequent domestic unrest) is a typical part of this hobby. Luckily, there are various ways out there for adding to ones stationery output, and a great one is penpals.

In the past half year, I’d count about 25 individuals among my recurring correspondents. On top of these letter-traders, there are the 100-odd souls who must suffer through my bimonthly or so mailings despite the lack of interest hinted at by their non-reply. Fortunately, most of the latter are family and friends that I otherwise correspond with in more modern ways, such as text, telephone or tweet, so I feel fairly confident I’m not in danger of getting a restraining order filed against me.

There are numerous parts of the penpal world that make letter-writing very rewarding for me. First there is the creative aspect of actually constructing the letter itself. Whilst I occasionally will compose a letter with no decoration on plain lined paper, most of my outgoing mail is fully customized. One of the project habits I really enjoyed this year was deconstruction-reconstruction of all my disused Field Notes notebooks into little correspondence booklets (basically an entire annual subscription that I found I did not like using due to a conflict with my form factor preferences).

Augmented with cord binding in place of the original staples and littered with all sorts of stickers, old used stamps and various other adhesive ephemera, it’s a nod both to the journaling world and the hipster Field Notes clan, of which I’ll, alas, likely never be young nor thin enough for.

I also enjoy using my collection of various papers and card stocks to create unique little souvenirs for my penpals. I like the creative process and I am learning some new design and fabrication skills as I have fun, which makes the fact that I’m not keeping the finished product for myself more tolerable a proposition.

A rather selfish end to all this giving is that there is a large body of stationery in my collection that was a case of “buy and try” that didn’t meet my needs, and this hobby helps me repurpose those artifacts rather than feeling guilty about waste or aggravated at having to use things that I don’t like.

Of course, between card stock, wax seals, paper cord binding, and massive amounts of writing space used up for decoration instead, the letters I send typically exceed the standard LetterMail rates of Canada Post. Domestic penpals are not too expensive for me, but I often drop a cool $5 for my international letters. On the positive side, this has inspired in me a mild interest in philatelics, so I incorporate a variety of both common and obscure postage as a part of the creative process.

Something I also do when composing my correspondence is transcribing a copy of each letter into my journal. In fact, this is essentially what journaling entails for me. I have never been very good at composing journal entries in the traditional way, where I am writing to myself, my future self, or some poor bored future soul who must read my writings. Typically such attempts at a personal diary fail after a few short weeks or at most a precious few months. But the content of the typical diary is very similar to the content of the letters I write people: daily happenings and mundane observations chronicling the life of the individual, in all its simplicity and in the slowly-evolving reconstruction of memories.

So it is that my journal consists of a large portion of such works, combined with the same decorative and creative ephemera gracing my letters, as well as my work notes, class notes, doodles and scribbles. And these I often and enthusiastically revisit, checking back to see what I wrote someone before, when some specific life event occurred, what sort of stationery artifacts I was using at the time, and all the other reasons journalers like having a perusable record of their cerebral dumps.

As always, if you want to be the recipient of such a creation - and especially if you would like to reciprocate - get in touch!